Horrible Bosses

Jason Bateman, Chris Day and Jason Sudeikis have Horrible Bosses. Bateman works in some sort of unspecified corporate office, where Kevin Spacey screws him around, dangles the carrot of advancement, and generally treats him like dirt. Chris Day is a dental assistant working for dentist Jennifer Anniston, who basically sexually harasses him all day. Sudeikis works for a chemical company, for Colin Farrell, who's a scumbag cokehead with a bad combover, who's just inherited the company off his much nicer dad (Donald Sutherland), and is intent on driving the company into the ground so he can extract as much money as he can out of it.

So, the three of them get talking about their problems (Chris Day's problems being notably taken less seriously), and joke about how they should kill their bosses. Then realise that none of them is really laughing. So, they begin to hatch plots to bump off the banes of their existence.

Cue a tale of bungling ineptitude, as three guys who have neither the natural inclination or talent for murder attempt to bump off their bosses.

There's really only two performances in the film; one is the collective performance of the three hapless employees - singly, they aren't really up to much, but somehow, as a gaggle of wisecracking incompetents they manage to turn out one pretty good comedy protagonist. The other is Kevin Spacey, who as anyone who's paid the slightest attention to his career to date, will know is excellent at the bullying psycho boss type.

Is it funny? Yes. Could it be funnier? Oh yes. The black comedy isn't black enough, Spacey's performance is great, but basically exactly what you're expecting. Jennifer Anniston's good at what she does (flirty psycho), but really, she's the comic relief, and you don't really need comic relief in a comedy. Colin Farrell's character actually looks like he has the most promise, and he's sadly underused. I got the impression from the blooper reel in the trailers that they shot more scenes with him, so either they cut back on him to focus on Spacey, or the scenes just weren't funny, but the scenes he's in he puts out such a really creepy vibe, he's amazing fun to watch.

Ultimately, I think this film might have lost more than a few points in the cutting room; it looks like it might have been re-edited by committee, and we might have lost some of the better stuff. That's just me speculating though. As it stands, It's a film thats worth paying some money for, but not one that's going to make it into your DVD/Blu-Ray collection until it hits the bargain bins.